My impression, never having been in the military, is that in boot camp you’re rushed to eat, and so active each day that you scarf down the couple thousand calories in seconds, your body using every gram of food provided.
My impression, never having been to jail/prison, is that you’re going to get between 1500 and 3000 calories in food via your two or three squares, and many are going to be using every gram of food provided.
Both environments are primarily no equipment training environments.
The calories supplied by the government are similar in both.
Both are environments where physical transformations are talked of amongst civilians.
How?
No one has ever starved to death on 2000 calories, though for many it’s quite low.
Enough activity makes you built, even if it’s not huge, enough activity will make you built.
High volume calisthenics and low calories…I can’t see it do anything but make you lean and strong.
Prison and boot camp both are designed for transformations!
At this point I wouldn’t bother prescribing weights in the majority of cases.
I’d rather you get wicked good at calisthenics.
Every body will be built – given enough calisthenics and a semblance of eating right.
Go do 10 amraps of pushups, dips, and pullups.
Heavy squats as a requirement is just internet propaganda of powerlifting identified weaklings.
You can thrive with no equipment.
Again go do 10 amraps of pushups, dips, and pullups. Do some lunges, bw squats, or burpees, and you’ll cover legs too.
Boot camp and jail/prison force you to diet, and have you train anywhere from a minimal amount to bonkers volume.
A lot of dudes just rack up massive workout volume in jail.
I’ve heard first hand accounts :
“Yeah, before I got gym privileges I worked out in my cell every day. Twice a week I did 1000 pushups for time, it got down to about ___ minutes.”
(It was under an hour.)
Another, a dude I never expected to work out, knew lunges, and told me he picked up doing them during his stints at the county jail.
It’s nice to be a civilian.
I get to have control over what I eat, how I train.
Still, I suggest everyone use the lessons of military PT and prison workouts for their own betterment.
If you’re not going to eat clean, do so much physical activity that you use every calorie you eat.
I’ve witnessed this and experienced it.
Lengths of time going without enough food can make you into a living breathing digestion machine able to process and run on EVERYTHING.
Human garbage disposal status.
I went from 195 to 215 in ten days off of an extra bread roll at school each day, wrestling season had ended.
A buddy at 5’9″ 165, who with a pill head mom lived off of the two school meals and a pack of ramen each day for a few years exploded to a muscular 185 in basic and tech school.
You can do a lot of activity on little calories. It makes you hard.
That’s in contrast to the elliptical riders with rolls upon rolls claiming to work out and who you know don’t eat anything resembling food.
Summer 2019’s “dip odyssey” was the bomb.
Burpees are a blast.
I love pushups!
I love weighted pushups!
Handstand work is worth doing.
And pullups are too!
Eat right and be very good a calisthenics.
Calorie level by goal, with calisthenics as a given.
Persistence & Tenacity